M-town graffiti artists creating book of photos

TOWN OF WALLKILL — A couple of local graffiti artists are putting together a book of hundreds of photos of graffiti in the Middletown area.

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By NATHAN BROWN

recordonline.com

By NATHAN BROWN

Posted Apr. 12, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By NATHAN BROWN
Posted Apr. 12, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

TOWN OF WALLKILL — A couple of local graffiti artists are putting together a book of hundreds of photos of graffiti in the Middletown area.

Joe Marino, who goes by "Prop," and his friend and fellow artist, who asked to be identified by his graffiti name, "Wez," started painting as teenagers in the 1990s. The two of them spent much of their youth painting near the railroad tracks. From 2000 to 2002, Wez writes in the book, local train tunnels were covered with pieces from their seven-member crew.

"It's my whole life in that book," Marino said. "I was doing some of that stuff before I knew how to drive a car."

The world of graffiti is secretive — it's illegal to spray-paint property without the owner's permission — and this fed the pair's sense of discovery as they got more into it.

Their murals ranged from serious work, like commemorations of the Sept. 11 attacks, to more light-hearted fare, like cartoon characters. They called themselves the WAL crew — "Writers at Large."

The book is called "Under the Bridge Middletown NY Graffiti;" they hope to finish it this summer. The photos and stories they've collected chronicle a time in the 1990s and early 2000s when, they say, the Middletown area was well-known among graffiti artists.

Marino moved here from the New York City suburbs when he was a child. He said he was surprised to find so much graffiti here in what seemed like a rural area.

When Wez was a teenager in the mid-1990s, he said, the graffiti on the water towers on Tower Drive would catch his eye. He would walk from his home to the Galleria mall, which would take him past the train station, and seeing the graffiti there also sparked his interest.

Wez said they would track down graffiti in tunnels or on back walls of abandoned buildings, and try to find the artists who created them. They said the art they did wasn't meant for the larger public — it was more about impressing other writers.

"It was a little club," said Marino. "We had the clubhouse, and this is where it was."

Most of their original crew members don't do graffiti anymore, Wez wrote, but they hope to reunite sometime soon. He still goes to the same spots today, looking for the next generation of writers, but leaves disappointed.

"I actually feel bad that no one now can go down to those tunnels and get the feeling I got when I saw a new piece done," he wrote.